The ANTI New Year's Resolutions: Looking Backwards Instead of Forwards
How I Changed My Life and Myself Last Year
Years ago, I abandoned New Year’s resolutions as empty promises that only lead to feelings of failure and disappointment. As the end of 2019 approached, I reflected instead on what had changed over the year in an organic way, not shaped by goals established on January 1. To inspire this organic change, I did not have an epiphany inspired by becoming more spiritually evolved. I had insomnia.
I love sleep. I need sleep. I never pulled all-nighters in college or grad school. The first year of each of my children’s lives were the worst for my emotional health because I was so painfully sleep-deprived. As I have preached across parenting articles, Sleep Is Everything. And my lifelong tendency toward sleep problems ballooned into the worst insomnia ever, last year.
“When the insomnia took hold, I had to face the hard truth that mentally and physically filling every minute wasn’t helping. I had to figure out how to do nothing, or at least nothing ‘productive.’ ”
As a natural problem-solver, not being able to identify the cause of this insomnia and fix it meant sobbing breakdowns at 3 am because I couldn’t sleep and I had no idea why. I might blame hormones because you know, aging, but I couldn’t accept my doctor’s assessment that “this is your new normal.” What I did accept was this was not a quick-fix situation; this was calling for a total makeover of my mind, body, and spirit.
In books I use with kids to teach them about managing stress and chronic pain, one of the first lessons explains how we need to have balanced minds, bodies, and spirits to experience overall health and well-being. It’s a lesson we could all benefit from reviewing, over and over, as I truly believe the state of our modern world encourages, reinforces, and promotes IMBALANCE just about everywhere.
As much as I didn’t want to admit it, the insomnia was likely a sign that my own mind, body, and spirit needed re-balancing. But HOW?
More Music, Less Talking and Thinking
Last year at Christmas, I received the gift of music with a 6-month Spotify subscription. I’m not sure how it happened, but over the years, I had almost completely stopped listening to music. Maybe it was the advent of podcasts and doing everything on our phones, but I realized that the language part of my brain was ALWAYS on. Whether it was through my writing or listening to podcasts as my “downtime,” even for the several minutes of being alone getting ready in the morning, I was existing in verbal overdrive.
So, I picked some random playlists and started listening to music. I remembered the beautiful synchronicity of music with moods, helping us feel emotions we need to feel in certain moments. Do I need confidence and energy one morning? Blast some Beyonce and Lizzo. Do I need calm and focus to get in the mindset for writing? Lumineers and Head and the Heart have been on repeat all year. It’s like a reset of balance to my brain to integrate music back into my life.
The music part was easy. I started playing it more, enjoyed the immediate reinforcement of feeling good when I listened, which helped me do it more, and voila: a tip toward better balance in my brain and being. The hard parts came after, but maybe the music helped me get there.
Permission to Sit: Letting Go of Productivity
Over the last few years, changes in my professional trajectory issued a serious test of how I define my self-worth. First, I had to realize how much “productivity” had become intertwined with my sense of value and worth in the world. I know I’m not alone; this is practically an epidemic in our modern world, and not coincidentally timed with the higher-than-ever rates of anxiety and depression. Tons has now been written and said about productivity as a poison, but as usual, there’s a difference between understanding a concept intellectually, and really understanding by living it.
After a lifetime of high achievement that has led me into worlds like academic medicine where there is no such thing as “enough,” and the to-do lists exceed normal workday hours in an infinite loop of regeneration, productivity had become as innate to my being as sleeping and eating. I left academic medicine (mostly) three years ago, and it has taken me this long to work through the guilt and shame of not having more emails to return, big projects demanding my talent, and external recognition of my value to a larger institution.
I took the opportunity to start writing this blog and flex my creativity brain that had been sitting dormant through grad school and working as an academic (writing peer-reviewed research articles is as antithetical to creativity as it gets). My new schedule consisted of carrying a full therapy caseload, efficiently scheduled within three days, developing a brand and creating content in my “spare” time, while you know – raising three kids.
Yet, because it felt so different from my previous work world, with more overall time and less overall stress, my compulsion was to continue filling every minute (because even if I didn’t have a research article to write, there’s always laundry). When the insomnia took hold, I had to face the hard truth that mentally and physically filling every minute wasn’t helping. I had to figure out how to do nothing, or at least nothing “productive.”
At first, I practically had to sit on my hands to keep my body from getting up to DO instead of SIT. I had to practice much of what I preach around using what’s called “cognitive coping,” or actively re-framing our thoughts to help us experience a moment differently. For example, instead of “I should be writing, posting on Instagram, folding the laundry, vacuuming, and paying bills,” I molded these automatic thoughts into, “Sitting calmly, being ‘unproductive’ but enjoying this moment, is helping me have the energy to do more later; this moment of peace is helping clear my brain to better reach my life goals, big and small.”
Of course, to get to this point, I had to truly believe the new thoughts, which is where mindfulness and meditation come in. I know, I know. It’s SO trendy right now, but for a very good reason. We are all spinning in a state of constant motion, mentally and physically, and have lost the peaceful center. Mindfulness practice, meditation, and Buddhist principles help guide us toward that center.
Meditations, Mindfulness, and Buddha: The Oldest, Newest “Trends”
A very intuitive person said to me last year, “you are the emotional center of your work and your family.” I realized this was why I was SO tired (along with not sleeping, all connected of course) even though I “shouldn’t” be without all that “productivity” discussed above. I am in full emotion-carrying mode at work and at home, and I’m really good at it, but I needed to give it the weight it deserved. Instead of saying to myself and others (but most importantly to myself), “I only work 3 days a week,” I started to say, “I carry a full caseload in 3 days, and then work from home 2 days.”
The ANTI New Years Resolutions
So, where does meditation and mindfulness come in? I made a choice to prioritize meditation time as much as possible. I changed my earliest appointment time at the office from 8:30 to 9:30 so I could meditate most mornings, even if for 10 minutes, instead of rushing frantically from school drop-off to the office because I technically CAN. After a few weeks, I came to not only rely on this morning meditation time, but I finally really NOTICED a difference. I was truly calmer. I felt that keyed up feeling in my chest fade away. I started to think differently, in a way that felt healthier for my mind, body, and spirit.
Yep. I’m one of those annoying people who is going to tell you to meditate. It helps, it works, it feels really good; you just have to keep doing it and the shift almost sneaks up on you.
The image that got me through chaos big and small over the year came from Sylvia Boorstein, a Buddhist writer and therapist. Essentially, it’s the image of ever-changing weather surrounding you while you are sitting calmly in the same position. The weather ranging from storms to sunshine represents the constantly shifting internal world of emotions and external world of stress outside of our control. Everything is always in flux, but we don’t have to be.
In my meditations, I picture myself rooted to the earth like a solid tree, still and present, but steady in the midst of swirling stress around me, even as my leaves rustle in the wind: children bickering, a house needing maintenance and cleaning, writing projects, the suffering of people I work with, and the suffering of people I love. All of it will always be rustling my leaves, but I can learn to stay as steady as a tree rooted in the earth, calm in the center of it all.
Perhaps most importantly, the slowing down encouraged by meditation and mindfulness-based thinking helped me realize the simplest truth: I have time. I have time to figure out my life and my future; I don’t need to run laps on the anxiety race track to get “there” as fast as possible, wherever “there” is. Taking this life thing one moment at a time, one Spotify playlist a time, one sitting-doing-nothing session at a time, may even help me know the “there” I’m heading toward.
Not “The End”
So, what happened to the insomnia that started it all? It’s not gone, because that would be too clean of an ending, and I’m far from “done.” In fact, I have come to the wisdom there is no “done.” But I am sleeping about 90% better, and I’m AT LEAST 50% “better” of a mother (except during the holidays when we are all falling apart after so much excitement and lack of routine). Okay I admit it, I’m making up these numbers, but the human brain likes numbers and I’m hoping to get my point across. I feel better, and I AM better.
I’m starting this year with maybe the most confessional blog post to date. Of course it helps me to write out my experience, but I could do this in my own journal secretly tucked into my nightstand. I’m sharing this because I truly hope some of the revelations and change I went through last year resonate and inspire your own pursuit of finding balance. The more of us who find better balance, the better we all are as ourselves, and together.
Time to use looking backward to look forward.
Happy New Year.
Resources that helped me find my center:
Books:
It’s Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness, Sylvia Boorstein
Permission Granted: Be Who You Were Made to Be and Let Go of the Rest, Melissa Camara Wilkins (I actually read this to start this year, but it echoed many of my revelations over the year that were part of feeling calmer and more centered, so I recommend!)
Podcasts:
Ten Percent Happier Podcast with Dan Harris
Meditation App Favorite: Insight Timer